A little past 10 Tuesday morning, the Urbanmarket, downtown's sole grocery store, was empty -- its aisles and many of its shelves. A few customers strolled in, some wearing AT&T badges. But they didn't stay long or leave with much. Two men, one with a long white beard and another with long dark hair, sat out front, at separate tables, each reading. A police car was parked nearby, on the sidewalk, empty. It's supposed to keep away the homeless. It doesn't.

For seven years, the grocery store tucked beneath the Interurban Building on the east side of downtown has struggled to keep its doors open. It has never made money -- never. The city has poured hundreds of thousands into it -- $550,000 alone in the fall of 2006, when the private sector kicked in a matching amount. This, after the city contributed $100,000 only a few months earlier.

Said a council briefing in September 2006, which you can read below: "Despite consistent improvement, operating deficits are expected to continue at a diminishing level until enough residential critical mass is achieved to sustain grocery operations."

Six years later, that critical mass still doesn't exist. And that, along with a lousy location and a proliferation of downtown convenience stores and restaurants among other contributing factors, means business is still bad. Maybe as bad as it's ever been.

That's why, quietly, the grocery store's being offered up for lease in the hopes that someone will take over the space, which also includes a restaurant and full bar. Jack Gosnell of UCR Urban, who spends most of his day trying to fill downtown's myriad empty retail spots, says he's spent the last several months trying find someone to take the space. The flier is below.

"And we're close," he says. "Very close."

Gosnell refers to the look-see as a "private search," and says "we've got three, four people interested -- small, urban meal-replacement-type operators clawing at it." He won't say who. But we can rule out one obvious guess: Eatzi's. Phil Romano, who's helping to build the restaurant-incubating Trinity Groves in West Dallas, has long maintained downtown doesn't have near the density to sustain one of his stop-and-shop eateries.

"I don't think the market downtown is ready for that," he says. "If there are more people downtown, if there's a big enough market for it, it will do well. They talked to me. But I didn't think downtown was ready [for a grocery in 2005], and it proved it out. It's gotta have business in order to survive. In due time it'll be good down there, but I don't think it's ready."

Gosnell says other grocery chains have also looked at the place and ruled it out -- for at least the next year, till the Continental Building and Atmos Lofts and other nearby redos begin to fill in.

"We're looking at major grocery operators, who are telling us we're a year, two years ahead of the curve," Gosnell says. He insists, though, that would-be grocers look beyond the guesstimated 7,500 people living in the Central Business District.

"If you stick a pin in Neimans, as the center of the district, within a one-mile circle you have 31,000 residents because you're going into East Dallas a little, State-Thomas, a little into Oak Cliff," he says. "When you broaden the circle, that is considered within the market for a grocery."

But Gerry Knaus, who says he's managed Urbanmarket for four years, says he's seen the demographics of downtown change during his tenure. "They used to be young professionals," he says, urban pioneers who liked the idea of an upscale market downtown. "Now they're blue-collar types who work in downtown." And they, he says, don't want or need a fancy grocery.

That's why Urbanmarket's recently introduced a dollar-store component, selling off-brand product for cheap. That's brought in a few customers, Knaus says, but they're spending pennies on the pennies on the dollar. And that's no way to make rent.

"We did the best we could," says Karl Zavitkovsky, head of the city's Office of Economic Development. "We provided downtown residents with a grocery store for five, six, seven years, and the fact is it couldn't sustain itself. You also had the 7-Elevens and the CVSes of the world come to downtown with partial competition. And the fact is the downtown residents' shopping patterns are so different from suburban residents who buy $100 worth of groceries. Downtown residents get something for dinner, or they shop for the moment. The numbers never worked, and we're still struggling with critical mass when it comes to residents."

Charles Acklen, who was part of the original investor group that opened the grocery store, says the California owners are behind the effort to lease Urbanmarket -- or sell it outright. Acklen, who can be seen in the Urbanmarket promotional video below, says it probably should have closed long ago, but after the city and "private shareholders downtown" kicked in more than a million, he and the Interurban's owners believed they owed it to the city to keep the doors open, even if that means losing money every day.

Says Knaus, to keep costs down the market only employs 12 -- way down from the staggering 82 full-timers employed in '06 -- and takes deliveries once a week. That's why "inventory is very low," says Acklen.

"And it breaks your heart to see it," he says. "We're looking to find some way to fund it, and hopefully somebody would like to buy it. We'd sell it at a very advantageous price. If Jack leased it, chances are we'd liquidate it and they'd open a new one, which would be fine."

Acklen maintains that after the city's cash infusion, the market began to turn around. Customers were plentiful, and the attached bar and restaurant did booming business. But, he maintains, the economic downturn of '08 decimated the business. He maintains population downtown declined dramatically, and once again the need for a downtown grocery store was no more.

He also agrees with Romano: He and his partners opened the Urbanmarket far too early.

"Definitely too early," he says. "No question."

Acklen says it's "strange" to be asked about Urbanmarket now, at this very moment: He's about to hit up the California owners for "more support," he says, at least "until they find a buyer on settle on what to do. I don't want to see it close. I really don't. We've poured everything into it. Everything. And our investor group is out. And I wouldn't ask the city to put more money into it because it's in a transition state, and I hope someone will be interested."